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2.1.9-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 2.1.9 The Unexpected The cavalry was very large and very impressive. It just so happened that there were twenty-six battalions to meet twenty-six battalions which strikes me as strangely fair. There is a valuable lesson here about the importance of proper scouting so that you don’t accidentally stumble upon a ravine that you should really know is there and that ruins everything. It’s kind of reminding me of 300 and how they weren’t nice to their guide there and were similarly screwed over. A bunch of French fighters and horses fell into the trench and were probably crushed to death when more people fell in behind them and that’s pretty horrifying. And from there the battle started going badly. Local legend, which Hugo grants probably exaggerated and just counted everyone who was ‘buried’ there, says that 2000 horses and 1500 men were in that ravine and I’m really curious how there are so many more horses than people. If the horse is falling into the ravine how could its rider escape? Did they jump off? Somehow climb up? That’s a really heavy loss for a freaking ravine at any rate. A third of Dubois’ brigade fell like this and they had only just managed to capture the flag! Napoleon probably guessed there was a ravine or something and asked his guide and the guide denied it. Be nice to your guides, people! Don’t force people who hate you to give you accurate and reliable information! But Hugo says it’s not the peasant’s fault; it’s God’s. And Napoleon’s, I guess, for pissing off God. Napoleon was just too important and too bloody and it was annoying so obviously he was going to be defeated in a hugely bloody battle. It was inevitable so, really, all of these other things might as well not have even gone wrong since he was still doomed. Not that I am skeptical of such things. Commentary Serrende Well, in the actual historical Waterloo battle there does not seem to have been a hidden ravine leading to a huge loss at a pivotal moment: there was a passage like that, but there are no other accounts but Hugo’s saying it played an important part of the battle. According to what Wikipedia tells me, at least… ^_^ Huge dramatic license! Doeskin-pantaloons (reply to Serrende) The thirty-page detailed description of the battle which I have been reading gives: A number of Frenchmen were forced off a small cliff… And that’s it - there’s no discussion of the repercussions or anything about it being a decisive moment. I think Hugo might have chosen to focus on that moment because it’s one of those things he can really attribute to Fate: Napoleon couldn’t help it that the peasant lied to him, and then thousands of men rode off a cliff and at the end of the day, what can you? So yeah, bit of dramatic license there. Also in terms of the question about why more horses than men died - I assume that some men saw what was coming, leapt off those horses and ran, whereas the horses would obviously have panicked, and might have ended up falling over the cliff because of that. Also, I guess it’s way easier for a man to climb out of a ravine than it is a horse?